The Back Page

"Oh, you're a chiropractor. They're back doctors, right?" "Well most people think that's what we are, but read on and get an idea of the true chiropractic story."

If you are like most, you suffer from occasional to constant vague aches and pains, digestive discomfort, bowel irregularity, menstrual disorders, fatigue, or other symptoms of feeling "not quite right". You may even have approached your medical doctor about your symptoms, but all the tests came back negative. Begrudgingly you accept the fact that you're just not sick enough and you just have to learn to live with it (you know it's not just in your head). Perhaps you start taking some over-the-counter preparation so that you feel better. But all along you have the uneasy feeling that maybe something is wrong and nobody knows what. In all probability you are right. But did you know that you do have another choice? You could consult with a chiropractor.

"Come on now. How could a chiropractor help in digestive problems, fatigue or menstrual cramps? Isn't that a bit far fetched?"

Did you ever feel that your body has a mind of its own? Like the time you got a vicious headache just before an important deadline. Or when you gave yourself a nasty cut, used a Band-Aid and it healed beautifully. Or how about your child's development from the union of a sperm and an egg to become a complex body capable of running the fifty yard dash in seven seconds. Apart from the original sex act, no external involvement was required, and that child developed with all the necessary parts in all the right places.

It just so happens that your body does possess an inborn intelligence that is constantly directing every function in your body necessary to keep it alive and as healthy as it can be. In biology this inborn intelligence is called homeostasis. Gray's Anatomy states, "Its [the nervous system's] function is to control and coordinate all other organs and structures, and to relate individuals to their environment." Embryologists have shown that the nervous system is the first organ system to develop, and it is capable of inducing the development of other tissues and glands. It is the nervous systems which provides the controlling influence over homeostasis in our bodies.

Nature was not foolish. She realized the importance of the nervous system and encased its major parts in the body's best protection -the skeleton. The central nervous system is housed inside the skull and surrounded by the vertebral column. The nerve fibers, in order to reach the tissues which they regulate, must first exit from the skull or between the moveable vertebrae. Can you see how, if something happened to cause one of these vertebrae to move out of place, it could impinge on one of the nerve roots, thus interfering with its electrical/message-carrying ability? Can you see how this could affect the tissues served by these nerves, be they muscle, kidney, large intestine, or uterus? The tissues at the end of the nerve cable would receive a garbled message, or the message would come too late, too soon, or not at all.

It was D.D. Palmer at the turn of the last century who postulated that interferences in the normal generation, transmission, distribution, or expression of the nervous system were what caused the development of symptoms and pathology. He further proposed that it was displacements of the neuroskeleton which caused such interferences. These displacements, associated with nerve interference, he called "subluxations".

Fortunately, all tissues are served by many nerves, so one or two subluxations are not fatal. But as more and more subluxations accumulate in your body, normal functioning becomes less and less efficient, and more and more difficult for your body's self-regulating mechanisms to control. The progressive development of accumulating subluxations is as follows: first you experience subtle things - minor discomforts, loss of energy, and possibly greater susceptibility to infection. As the subluxations become chronic, cells begin to malfunction and create abnormal physiological responses. Later, real tissue damage begins to occur as waste products accumulate, the immune system becomes overworked, cells die at a more rapid rate than usual, and abnormal lab findings begin to be apparent. Now you are a good candidate for drug therapy or surgery.

Or are you? Wouldn't it be nice if this process could be arrested before tissue damage occurred, so you could avoid the risks of medication and surgery? Consulting with a chiropractor could be the first step in that direction. The chiropractic system of evaluating body function is unique in the healing arts. It is the only health profession dedicated to the detection and correction of subluxations. Chiropractic deals largely with functional health disturbances as opposed to pathology. Chiropractors have been thought of as back doctors because we manipulate spinal bones to release impinged nerves. True, much of my time and analysis is spent looking at the spine, but my interest in the musculoskeletal system is similar to the pianist's interest in the black and white keys of the piano - merely a way to affect a much greater system. To the pianist, it is the production of fine music; to the chiropractor, it is the production of a finely tuned high performance nervous system.

The nervous system can keep a body well or make it sick, depending on how it is treated by its owner. Don't you think your body deserves the best? Why operate and live inside a Pinto, when your birthright was a Ferrari? See a chiropractor and experience a better tuned nervous system.

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